PARIS (awp/afp) – The entire kyiv region has returned to Ukrainian control, after the withdrawal of Russian forces from key towns near the capital, kyiv says on the 38th day of the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian forces are operating a “rapid withdrawal” from the Kyiv and Cherniguiv regions in northern Ukraine, with the aim of redeploying to the east and south, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Mykhailo, said on Saturday. Podoliak.
Here is an update on the situation, based on elements from AFP journalists on site as well as official Ukrainian and Russian statements, Western sources, analysts and international organizations.
Kyiv and the North
Ukrainians have regained control of the entire Kyiv region after Russian forces withdrew from key towns near the capital, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Maliar announced on Saturday.
The localities of “Irpin, Boutcha, Gostomel and the whole kyiv region have been liberated from the invader”, said Ms. Maliar on Facebook.
Ukraine has confirmed that Russian forces are carrying out a “rapid withdrawal” from the Kyiv and Cherniguiv regions in the north of the country, in order to better “maintain control” of the “vast territories” they occupy in the east and the South.
In Boutcha, northwest of kyiv, where an AFP journalist saw the bodies of at least twenty men in civilian clothes on Saturday. Nearly 300 corpses were buried in total “in mass graves”, its mayor Anatoly Fedorouk told AFP.
On Saturday morning, the British Ministry of Defense had reported a probable departure of Russian forces from Gostomel airport, “where fighting had been going on since the first day of the conflict”.
For the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Moscow has also “abandoned the effort to take Kharkiv”, the second city of Ukraine, in the North, pounded for weeks.
Its new objectives are to “target the Ukrainian forces” on the spot and to “roll towards the South-West” to “join the Russian forces” massed in the territory of Lugansk.
East and South
“It is quite clear that Russia has chosen another priority tactic”, wrote the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaïlo Podoliak, on the Telegram messenger: “to withdraw towards the East and the South” to “keep control of vast occupied territories” and “hardly dictate its conditions”.
According to the head of the military administration of the Donetsk region, Pavel Kyrylenko, the Russian army again bombarded the Donetsk region in the Donbass overnight with phosphorus bombs in some places. Two children died following strikes in the neighboring region of Lugansk, according to the emergency services.
Russian forces, “after the failure of operations to take kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities in March”, “seek to take the entire territories of Lugansk and Donetsk”, estimates the ISW.
Also according to the American institute, Moscow troops “captured Izium” (Northeast) on Friday “after three weeks of combat” and they “should take Mariupol in the coming days, even if they continue to suffer there heavy losses.”
A strategic port in the south-east of the country, on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol remains besieged and pounded relentlessly. At least 5,000 people died and 160,000 civilians are still stranded, according to Ukrainian sources.
On Friday, “humanitarian corridors operated in three regions: Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporozhye. We managed to save 6,266 people, including 3,071 from Mariupol,” President Zelensky said overnight from Friday to Saturday.
In Kherson (south), the only major Ukrainian city controlled by Russian forces, the latter “should not conduct offensive operations in the near future”, according to the ISW, for whom they will rather try to defend the territory than they control around Kherson in the face of Ukrainian counter-attacks.
West and Center
Infrastructure was hit in Dnipro as well as in Kremenchuk (center), headquarters of the largest Ukrainian oil refinery, indicated the presidency of the country, while the Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Saturday morning that it had destroyed with “weapons of precision” of the refinery’s gasoline and diesel fuel depots.
Human losses
No precise and recent assessment of the civilian victims is available but it obviously reaches – and at the very least – several thousand.
Militarily, the ranges are extremely wide. Russia acknowledged last week the death of 1,351 soldiers for 3,825 wounded, the first figures for more than three weeks.
Western sources speak in unison of several thousand dead on the Russian side, kyiv even going up to 12,000.
On the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on March 12 of “about 1,300” soldiers killed. A figure that is also insignificant.
Refugees and displaced
The conflict has already forced more than 4.1 million Ukrainians to flee their country, according to the UN.
In total, more than ten million people, more than a quarter of the population, have had to leave their homes either by crossing the border to take refuge in neighboring countries, or by finding refuge elsewhere in Ukraine.
The UN estimates the number of internally displaced persons at nearly 6.5 million.
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